Post-Quarter-Life-Crisis

16Mar08

(I’m not dead! Really! Just comatose from the bar exam for a while, that’s all.)

I picked up a copy of Quarterlife Crisis last week, and about forty pages in I realized that the book was doing me no good, mostly because I’ve already had my quarterlife crisis, thanks. (Had it right out of undergrad. Mostly over it by the time I hit law school.) But what I’m in now seems to be the “post-quarterlife crisis”: I’m finally realizing that all those things I thought would happen when I was An Adult…are happening. Happened.

For instance:

1.) Many of the adults I admired (not least my mother) as people who Had It Figured Out and/or were Sources of Teh Wisdomz have turned out to be, in fact, human. (Mom’s response to this revelation: “Well DUH, dear.”) Other ones have just turned out to be friends. I’ve decided this doesn’t mean I need better idols; it means I need to stop assuming other people have some magic Figuring It Out Powah that I somehow lack.

2.) I spent my entire adolescence, undergrad, and law school struggling to convince myself that I really did want to move away from home and it was really the best thing for me and home sucked and why would anyone want to stay there and really the only thing I want out of home is me. Turns out I fought this battle so fiercely precisely because the only thing I wanted was to Go Home (“home” being “where my family is,” not “a particular location” – and they say Gypsy habits aren’t genetic). Now that I’m in the process of Going Home, I’m happier than I’ve been in YEARS.

3.) The job market sucks. I also don’t have to be a wage slave.

4.) The people who need me are not the upper-middle and upper classes for whom my swanky T10 law degree has prepared me to work. It’s the people I left at home, who have neither money nor lawyers. This is why I’m going home.

5.) My car needs new back brakes. (This is not a revelation. Just a fact.)